The Train They Call the City of New OrleansSteve Goodman
Illustrated by Michael McCurdy, A64, Museum 71G. P. Putnam’s Sons

The song “City of New
Orleans,” written by Steve Goodman and made
famous by Arlo Guthrie, captured an era in American history when people criss-crossed
the country by train. Using scratchboard-and-watercolor illustrations, award-winning
illustrator Michael McCurdy has illuminated the striking views from the train
of the same name as it journeys from snowy,
industrial Chicago through small Midwestern towns to lush Louisiana.

Thirteen-year-old Mia Winchell appears to be the most
normal kid in her family, but she knows that she is far
from ordinary. Mia is keeping a secret: Sounds,
numbers, and letters cause her to see an array of color. When she finally reveals
the truth, she feels like a freak and embarks on an intense journey of self-discovery.
And before it’s too late, she must lose something very special in order
to find herself.

Worried All the Time: Overparenting
in an Age of Anxiety and How to Stop It
David Anderegg, Eliot-Pearson 81Free Press

In the tradition of Dr. Spock, child and family therapist
David Anderegg reminds contemporary parents that parenting
is not “rocket science.” So why are so many
worrying? Even though most American families are safer
and healthier today than at any other time in our history,
studies show that parental anxiety has reached an all-time
high. Anderegg draws on social science research and his
own experience to clarify facts and fantasies about kids’ lives
today and
the key issues that preoccupy parents.

Two
late-developing nations, Japan and Italy, have traveled
parallel courses despite very different national identities.
Richard J. Samuels, the Ford International
Professor of Political Science and director of the Center for International Studies
at MIT, explores the role of human ingenuity in political change. Beginning with
the founding of modern nation-states, he traces the developmental dynamic in
both countries through the failure of early liberalism, the coming of fascism,
and wartime defeat.

At War with Ourselves: Why
America Is Squandering Its Chance to Build a Better
World
Michael Hirsh, A79

As correspondent for Newsweek, Michael Hirsh
has reported on American foreign policy from every continent.
Using colorful vignettes and up-close reporting from his
coverage of the first two post–Cold War presidents,
Bill Clinton and George W. Bush, Hirsh offers an explanation
of America’s role as the world’s uberpower
and shows the grave danger of our failure to understand
that our overwhelming military and economic power makes
us more and not less dependent on our standing in the
international community.

This latest book by personal-development trainer and
life-changing success coach Dr. Joe Rubino is a guide
to re-establishing self-image. He takes the reader
step-by-step through exercises, including the “12 steps to restoring your
self-esteem,” which include uncovering the source of lack of self-esteem,
discovering the secret to reclaiming personal power and an upset-free life, and
creating a vision of “no regrets.”

With his father, Helmut, Peter Marc Waszkis chronicles
the development of the metal trading profession from
man’s first discovery of metal some 8,000 years
ago to today’s modern global trade. Starting with
the history of how traders facilitated the making of
bronze, the book follows the development of the metal
trading profession from Greeks mining silver to the early
German lead and silver merchants to the start of the
Industrial Revolution by metal
traders.

English professor Jay Cantor’s newest novel, Great
Neck, tells the story of a group of friends growing
up idealistic, radical, and romantic in the 1960s and
’70s. The novel brings the reader inside privileged
Long Island childhoods, into the churches, juke joints,
and jails of Mississippi, and the underground meetings
and protest marches fueled by a potent mix of sex, politics,
and drugs. A story of members of a generation who sometimes
saw themselves as superheroes.

Daniel Dennett, University Professor and Austin B. Fletcher
Professor of Philosophy, has played a major role in expanding
the understanding of consciousness, developmental psychology,
and evolutionary theory. In Freedom Evolves,
he explains how evolution is the key to resolving the
ancient problems of moral and political freedom. According
to Dennett, biology provides the perspective from which
we can distinguish the varieties of freedom that matter.
Here is the story of how we came to be different from
all other creatures, how our early ancestors mindlessly
created human culture, and how culture gave us our minds,
our visions, our moral problems—in a nutshell, our
freedom.

English lecturer Dale Peterson exposes a disturbing secret:
the looming extinction of humanity’s closest relatives,
the African great apes—chimpanzees, bonobos, and
gorillas. He details how, with the unprecedented opening
of African forests by European and Asian logging companies,
the traditional consumption of wild-animal meat in Central
Africa has suddenly exploded in scope and impact, moving
from what was recently a subsistence activity to an enormous
and completely unsustainable commercial enterprise. Supported
by color photographs, Eating Apes documents the
when, where, how, and why of this rapidly accelerating
disaster.